


maybe next year is the year (maybe last year)

by lightningwaltz



Category: A Softer World
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, a bittersweet victory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/pseuds/lightningwaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after an alien invasion and a takeover by a dystopian government, life still has to go on somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe next year is the year (maybe last year)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marks/gifts).



> The challenge (pick any comic in A Softer World and write about it) was freaking awesome. I couldn't have imagined a better assignment, seriously. I couldn't limit myself to just one comic, though. Like my recipient, I enjoy everything on this site. In the end I decided to write hypothetical vignettes for several different panels. One of the things I love most in A Softer World is the overall sense of a society that's just completely fallen apart. However, people are still dealing with the ridiculousness (and the banality, sometimes) of living, dating, and pissing each other off. I tried to maintain that general mood for this fic.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, Marks. Thank you for such a fun assignment!

_my grandfather died in a war. my father died in a war. me? i’m holding out hope for a zombie attack._

Jimin’s grandfather and father had both died in lands far away. Depending who you asked, it was said that those countries were now too radioactive to sustain life. Or the aliens had aggravated environmental problems and sunk them below the sea. Or they were outside the Government’s control, and you could sleep with whoever you wanted without applying for permission.

Next month, when he turned eighteen he would probably be conscripted to fight, altered to breathe in space, and sent to one of the space stations to await the next rounds of battle.

None of this could be enforced, of course, if all Government personnel had been turned into zombies. He had heard of terrorist cells that were experimenting with chemicals in the hopes of accomplishing just that. He didn’t know why they wouldn’t just make something that would kill them all immediately. Maybe it was because someone had a “creepy-ass disasters bingo card” somewhere, and they needed “zombie invasion” to make a row. Or maybe the resistance didn’t want to impart the mercy of a quick and bloodless takeover.

Either way, as soon as he heard the rumors, Jimin began stockpiling crackers and canned fruit, slept with a knife under his pillow, and prayed for the best.

_my super power is everyone smiles at me. i don’t know who to trust._

The missive was brief and to the point: _Your mission has been terminated due to lack of success. You will be re-assigned to a new one at a later date._  
Carlos didn’t need further explanation on the whys and wherefores. All attempts at increasing a test subject’s charisma had failed completely. In his case, people felt compelled to break into a grin as soon as they saw him. The naturally friendly thought little of it, but others knew and resented him for it. Behind their smiles, he could just tell they were plotting his death.

It could be worse. One of the other guys in his team made others burst into laughter whenever they heard his voice. He knew this because he had barely heard the man’s rants about the program’s failures; Carlos had been cracking up too hard.

Now he wondered where he would wind up. Hopefully he’d get some anti-betrayal superpowers that made others forget murderous schemes.

_I don’t know whether that screaming man with the handgun was part of the play or not. And I don’t want to know. Shakespeare is awesome_

_For undisclosed reasons, Jane failed to qualify for espionage training or genetic modification (her inner five-year-old self would have loved to fly or walk through walls, so this came as an especial disappointment.) This did not mean the powers-that-be would waste her talents._

_“Don’t worry,” said the representative from the Government. He always sat perfectly straight, and Jane was consistently distracted the skeletal wings that had been attached to his shoulders at some point. In all their meetings, in which he had blathered about protocol and battle strategy, she had wondered if he detached them in order to sleep. If he even could. “At least you have your English degree.”_

_Jane turned this statement over in her head. It was something she would have been simultaneously ecstatic and perplexed to hear, six years ago, in the time that came before. Now it was still confusing, but for different reasons._

_The man wasn’t joking though (he’d later inform her that the ability to understand humor had been wiped away from his genetic code; it took up too much space.) The government was sincerely interested in promulgating Art and Entertainment, if only for the sake of calming and placating the populations under their control. And they wanted Jane to direct Shakespeare plays for her region. Actors and a budget were assigned to her, but she was allowed a modicum of creative control._

_For the first few weeks she put on Titus Andronicus. She didn’t know why; perhaps it was borne from some revolutionary impulse in her that she normally subdued. Or she wanted the chance to mess around with a lot of fake blood (in all honest that was more likely.) She took to the enterprise with a sense of perfectionism that was not usually in her nature. But the government had been wrong about something; she technically had never finished college. The alien invasion had come while she was writing the last few pages of her senior thesis, her desk littered with energy drinks, the panic of an all-nighter comfortably setting into her bones. She never got a chance to finish that damn paper, and she was still pissed off about it._

_In the last performance of that particular play, the plot was interrupted as an escapee from the government’s detainee center rushed onto the stage, pointed a gun at the audience, and blathered and ranted about all kinds of conspiracy theories._

_The man was quickly subdued and led off stage. That night, the actors and director received a standing ovation that lasted ten minutes, and Jane was discreetly ordered to switch to one of the comedies._

__  
_that was no star last night. radio says it was the space station exploding. no wish for me!_  


Ally’s three year old son pointed excitedly when a bright flash zoomed across the night sky.

“You know what that was?” She asked. Her child shook his head, watching her attentively.

“A shooting star,” Ally explained. Once, when she was ten, she had gone with her old siblings to look watch a meteor shower and she had loved it. Just now, the solemn curiosity in her son’s face made her want to speak safety into reality, however. “And if you make a wish on it, it’ll come true. Though you can’t tell me what it is.” He closed his eyes and, not for the first time, she wondered just what was going on in her son’s mind.

Her Government job was low-level, but Ally entitled her to hearing all sorts of classified information. The next day she learned that her suspicions were correct; a space station had exploded, and the war was not going well.

_When we kiss I can hear your thoughts. So I’d rather we didn’t._

“Why did you break up with Jeff?” Asked Linda’s friends, as soon as they caught word of the news. Her ex-boyfriend was considered something of a catch; handsome, amusing, and as a doctor he was entitled to receive twice as many rations as most people. “He was your chosen partner, isn’t the government going to give you trouble?”

“Probably but…” She shrugged. “We weren’t compatible.”

Her friends all nodded along, until they realized they had never seen the couple argue. “How so?”

“I was modified to read thoughts when I touch people, remember?”

Linda let them mull that thought over, but she could tell they were mostly thinking kinky things. “Yeah, you’d _think_ so. Reality was a lot more boring. Trust me, you’d get tired of making out with someone who was more concerned with missing all the TV that had to be canceled because of the because of the invasion.”

_i made a bunch of stickers to put on rooftops, and in secret tunnels. “if you are reading this then you are awesome.”_

_For six months no one would admit to owning any Post-It notes. This was due entirely to their sudden prevalence in cities all over the country, and the ensuing panic of the Government._

_“IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THEN YOU ARE AWESOME.”_

_The furtive debates raged; government propaganda? Secret messages from one revolutionary to other? What the fuck, seriously?_

_The truth was it was neither. Policy makers were well aware that, somehow, the culprit had never been caught on camera. Rebels tried for months to crack the code, until they realized there was none to be found._

_Regardless of origin, the notes had a 91.3% success rates of making the reader feel a little brighter; in its own way, that was a revolutionary act._

__  
_i have super powers and a costume. every night I panic just outside my door. But every night I try again._  


Ria could move objects with her mind, read thoughts and fly.

She had been such a useful test object to the Government, so overtly meek and compliant, that she had been given all sorts of privileges. Hers was one of the few apartment without wiretapping or random searches.

As a result, no one suspected Ria of being one of the foremost leaders of the rebellion. And she did it all from the comfort of her living room. Every day, for a single year, she had promised herself that one day she’d leave her living quarters willingly, and every day she took one look at the outside world and ruled against it.

After she got over that nonsense, she aided the underground movement in other ways. She housed refugees and political enemies, and stored information vital to their cause.

“What did they do to you to make you so afraid?” A particularly daring revolutionary asked once. “The Government, I mean.”

Ria only laughed. “I’ve been this way all my life,” taking a certain satisfaction as she felt the man’s confusion.

_I called my therapist yesterday in a panic. I said “what if the sky calls again?” And she said “well, what if you fall in love?”_

In between rounds of duty, Jyoti took the space shuttle home to heal her wounds and throw parties. Half a year back she had passed the tests that allowed ‘socialite’ to be added to her list of permitted duties. This meant reduced prices on alcohol and the right to gatherings of more than twenty-five people.

For each occasion, she through her soul into the proceedings. She laughed and charmed, and was effortlessly effervescent. Years ago, she had partied like it was going illegal. Now that it kind of _was_ , she was even better at it.

And each night, when there was no one around to distract her, she had to make a choice; she could stay awake until dawn or soldier through nightmares filled with blood, death, and the faces of those she wouldn’t see again. Daybreak usually found her in bed, debating the merits of ever leaving it.

The Government provided for her in this regard, too. Without fail, her designated therapist would call her an 10 a.m., and eventually Jyoti would feel ready to greet the world again.

There was one woman she always looked for at her gatherings, and would be disappointed when she didn’t show. Sona was quite tall (“Naturally, even,” she had once quipped), reserved and clever, turned Government regulated clothing into works of art, and was a fantastic kisser.

“My brother was taken away this afternoon. For treason,” Sona whispered in Jyoti’s one night, her words obscured from nearly everyone by the blaring music.

Jyoti’s heart fell. If a sibling was arrested, the rest of the family would probably be next. “Can you be at my house tomorrow?” She, equally quiet.  
For several moments Sona stared, and then slowly nodded. She understood.

Jyoti had no plans for escape, no contacts in the underground movement, no way to pull off a prison break, nothing. If anything, they’d start looking for her 10:01 am when she failed to pick up her phone.

But the two of them would figure something out.

_atomic war means no traffic in the mornings, no bill in the mail, i can stay in bed with you all day_

Far below ground, in their well-provisioned bunker, Michael and Celia were discussing treason and matrimony.

As far as the former was concerned, they ran a risk of trouble later; that as always a possibility. No doubt their building was tapped, and every conversation they had was being transcribed _somewhere_ for future scrutiny. Still, as days went by, and the only word that came by was that of more explosions aboveground, the fear became even more remote.

“Did you know that years ago I was obsessed with all this?” Michael confessed one day, when the clock claimed that it was a few minutes past noon above ground.

Celia blinked. “War?”

“No, I meant…” Michael trailed off. “You know. Aliens, zombies, government conspiracies. That kind of stuff. I don’t even know.”

“The reality is a lot more boring, huh?” She asked, and her companion laughed. She understood his point, though. Celia had once enjoyed a creepy tale as the next person. Then her life had turned into a series of unrelentingly weird moments, and she at some point had begun wishing that there were urban legends about people doing mundane tasks like going to school or the grocery store and _nothing else happening_.

“We should get married,” Michael said quietly, during a lull in their conversation.

“The Government’s assigned you to someone else,” she said by rote, and then suddenly a chill went down her spine. It had been her stock answer to this question for what felt like years and years… but what did it mean now?

“And if there is no one around to make me?” He said, as if reading her mind (and maybe he was, but Michael had said he gotten that under a while ago. Celia was inclined to believe him.)

“If they can’t stop us…” She found herself smiling as if she’d never stop. “Well then.”

There were no rings to exchange, but they made there _were_ vows to make and a perfectly nice bed to stay in.


End file.
